The Vasa: An Ill-fated Swedish Warship

The story of the Vasa begins in the early seventeenth century when King Gustavus Adolphus decided that a major warship should be built for the Swedish navy as the nation was at war with Poland during the Thirty Years War. This ship, to be called the Vasa, was to be the grandest in artillery, per the king’s orders. The Vasa was large enough to contain two decks, with 64 guns on one of the decks. Of these guns, 48 of them weighed 24 pounds each, making the deck quite heavy. The Vasa was designed by Henrik Hybertsson, a Dutch shipbuilder who signed a contract with Adolphus to build the ship for the Swedish navy. Even though the Vasa had sleek lines to the shape, making it somewhat modern for the seventeenth century, the design proved to be impractical. Once the ship was completed, the hull weighed 1200 tons while the ballast was only 120 tons – one tenth of the hull’s weight. It was this error that would cost the Swedish navy the lives of fifty people and the ship itself.

The Vasa was no ordinary warship: the stern contained lavish painted sculptures of many figures, gargoyles, animals, and masks that had roots in Mesopotamian, Greek, and Scandinavian myth and folklore. Even mermaids donned the ship where the space on the other side served as the captain’s room. For such a warship to be so decorated was unusual, but for Gustav it was a way of asserting his power as a major Scandinavian king. The heavy sculptures only added to the weight of the ship, making it even more heavy than before and thus harder to maneuver in the waters. King Gustavus Adolphus was anxious to see the Vasa set afloat with the crew on board, even though he was in Poland when the ship finally set sail in 1628 but there was one problem: the builders of the ship believed that due to the structure of the ship, it would not be able to stay afloat. Being top heavy without the proper ballast, it would not take much for the Vasa to sink and ultimately, it didn’t. The measurements for the Vasa were 230 feet long, 172 feet high.

On August 10, 1628 the ship left the harbor and barely withstood a heavy wind that blew the ship towards the ship’s port side. Vice-admiral Klaus Fleming gave the final yes in the launching of the Vasa in the Stockholm’s harbor. Prominent figures of nearby nations as well as Sweden were ready to see the ship set sail and as the ship started to leave the harbor, a strong wind blew the port side, causing the ship to sway in the water and within one nautical mile of the harbor, the spectators saw the Vasa slowly sink to the bottom of the ocean. Of the two hundred people on board, 150 of them managed to get to shore safely, while the other fifty perished with the ship. Those from rival nations who saw the ship go down concluded the Swedes were in no shape to be building practical warships. The king of Sweden immediately sought out who to blame for this disaster, imprisoning the captain of the ship, Sofring Hansson, for negligence. The builders who tried to warn the king about the ship’s design were also forced to pay their dues. At one point, the king even blamed himself, in thinking he was too hasty to get the ship launched when it really should not have been. Ultimately, the king blamed the sinking as an act of God, something that happened beyond the control of the ship builders and launchers.